


Fading Fast

by stillskies



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-04
Updated: 2012-03-04
Packaged: 2017-11-01 03:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/351635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillskies/pseuds/stillskies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They move on with their lives, but bonds aren't easy to break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fading Fast

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Iambic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iambic/gifts).



> Originally posted 12-16-2010

_Two majors,_ the girls around her exclaim. _Do you even have any free time?_

Himawari just smiles and shifts the textbooks in her hands. She doesn’t tell them that she doesn’t want the free time, that she doesn’t want the time to think. The busier she is, the less she thinks about the lonely boy stuck in a shop that he can’t leave. The less she thinks of the steadfast man who never strays from the boy’s side.

No. She doesn’t want the time to think, so she piles on class after class. And if the homework takes all night to complete, then she doesn’t dream. Exhaustion is easily circumvented by coffee, she discovers, so she begins going to study sessions that last through the night.

+++

He struggles between the two at first. He enters the shop to find Watanuki bloodied more often than he’d like, but Watanuki constantly tells him there is nothing he can do about it. But the sight of blood smeared on Watanuki’s face, staining the collar of his kimono, haunts Shizuka’s dreams.

 _It would be easier to protect him if I knew what I was up against,_ he thinks one night, after coming home to collapse in exhaustion. The spirits no longer target him, Shizuka knows, but that doesn’t mean they are gone. And Watanuki knows so little about this world that he’s entangled himself in.

The counselor is waiting for him when he enters. _Have you decided?_ she asks, voice cheerful, as though this decision has little impact on his future.

He nods, and all he sees is Watanuki collapsed on the floor, blood trickling from the cut on his forehead. _Folklore,_ he says, resolute.

The counselor raises her eyebrows at the statement, but says nothing. Instead, she nods and picks up one of the two papers sitting on her desk. She hands him the paper.

He doesn’t look at it. He stands, bows, and thanks her for her time.

+++

She isn’t surprised when he answers on the first ring, though she isn’t so conceited as to think he’s been waiting for her call.

She babbles at him, telling him about her classes and the people that she has met and the things that’s she’s doing. He listens politely, every so often interjecting with his opinion. If he notices that she sounds out of breath, he doesn’t mention it.

He asks her about finals and she tells him that they’ll be difficult. _I have a full course load,_ she tells him. She doesn’t mention the two extra classes that the college administration is allowing her to take on top. He may not be vocal, but since Watanuki-kun’s fall, she has become one of the few people in Doumeki-kun’s life that he worries about.

She would be flattered if she didn’t know it was because she means so much to Watanuki-kun. Instead, she is happy with his occasional expressions of worry, and does her best to keep them few and far between. After all, there isn’t much he can do for her, not now that she is hundreds of kilometers and a two and a half hour train ride away.

 _Make sure you don’t overwork yourself, Kunogi,_ he tells her, and she has the wild idea that he _knows_ – knows that she’s not sleeping and that she’s not thinking and and and… It’s impossible and possibly coincidental that he says this when she’s in the midst of her newest self-destructive behavior.

 _I could say the same to you,_ she says lightly instead. She isn’t talking about his course load and she knows that he knows that. But it is an unspoken rule that, on the rare occasions that they talk to each other without Watanuki-kun’s intervention, Watanuki-kun is not mentioned.

Doumeki-kun grunts in acknowledgement, though they both know that he’ll continue to overwork himself, put himself in harm’s way, all if it means keeping Watanuki-kun safe. Just as they know that Himawari will overwork herself and deprive herself of sleep, keeping herself so busy so that she is not tempted to take a train and see them.

She stifles a yawn and realizes her coffee has gone cold. _I should be going,_ she says.

 _Good luck,_ Doumeki-kun says before signing off.

She stares at the disconnected phone for a moment before whispering the same.


End file.
